Microsoft's Teams goes to bat for the other team with preview on Linux Microsoft has plugged the wafer-thin niche of Linux desktop users that want a native app for the company's Slack-for-suits platform, Teams. Available in .deb and .rpm packages, the preview is the first Microsoft 365 app to hit the Linux desktop world, although it has been possible to enjoy Microsoft's take on collaboration for …
... the first Microsoft 365 app to hit the Linux desktop world ...
Hell will freeze many, many times over before I let any of that 365 crap near my Linux box.
This is not good and will bring nothing but grief and sorrow to Linux.
It's not good for Linux desktop users, it's not good for the Linux ecosystem, it's not good for anything Linux.
Beware:
Anyone who has been in IT for the last 25 years or so knows perfectly well what the MSbrace can and will do unless you keep a safe distance.
But everyone is just so delighted these days, some sort of collective amnesia seems to have set in among the IT community.
"Looooook, Ma !!!
I can now have Office 365 in my Debian !!!
It's so cooooool ..."
When they eventually realise what is going on, it will be too late and the infection will have set in.
The dumb dickheads that cozy up to this shit are only digging their own grave.
O.
Imagine how upset they'll be when they find out there's Microsoft code in the Linux kernel (5th biggest contributor), and that the majority of Azure VMs are running Linux...
Ahh, but most of the contribution is to help Linux run better on a Ms licence platform.
From my point of view, it's not contributing, more clogging up with irrelevances.
I recently discovered rclone, which has the ability to connect to onedrive, and can mount it as a filesystem. It can also stack a caching layer on top of your mount so it is tolerant of intermittent network issues e.g.on train Wi-Fi. So now I have my work onedrive mounted at ~/onedrive and can read and write files (more or less) as if they were local. Worth a look!
My Work One Drive is happily mounted on my Ubu 18.04 desktop, The only issue I have is that it will silently fail when I change passwords, and the instructions are a bit muddy.. I think I downloaded it from github and compiled it. I prefer my NextCloud server :). I'd toss the url up but I'm on a tablet, anv the laptop is in the bag.
The one gotcha I had was the post login url... just cut and paste the whole thing in at the cli prompt.
At work, about half of my job is Linux development. Unfortunately, my employer has decided to require us to use O365, and Teams, I'll spare my diatribe about how awful Teams is and how much I hate having to use it. But one thing I will absolutely not do is use it in Linux.
I strongly prefer to keep that garbage on Windows box with the rest of the Windows garbage.
I'm the MD of a MS "partner". I run Arch on my gear.
LibreOffice, Draw.io (Visio), Evolution (with EWS for email) and a bit of imagination gets the job done with no MS products needed. Samba and autofs for file serving and sharing and Kerberos ("domain joined"). CUPS for printing (Kerb again).
I also have access to a huge amount of other stuff and a maximum five minute full system update time, including all apps. To be fair, if I use a few AUR packages that need compilation from source then that takes a bit longer.
...I actually hope they do port across the big four Office 365 programs + Teams
Hmmm, I share your desire for convenience, but I don't agree this is the way to solve it. I mean, working in a completely MS free environment we're absolutely fine. Everything works. Perfectly I might add. And no, we are not IT people, don't do anything "softwary". We do medical and deal with people. IRL problems start when we have to deal with MS using idiots. Who only just know the difference between a left and right mouse button. Shout about "industry standards" and claim intelligence. That "there is something wrong with your PowerPoint. Do remind me why you don't have Windows?" <commie reference left out>. And of course never ever have any doubt that a cause for whatever issue might be located on their side.
So to nuance your remark: what MS should do is finally make their softwares compliant, you know, with something like ISO standards. And I don't mean the ones they bought lobbied. So that the compatibility is OK, just an after thought, and people can focus on work, content, and not how they should do it. And it is possible. That's how MS killed WordPerfect, Havard Graphics, Lotus and QuatroPro after all.
But as we all know MS never will, because that would intervene with their only concern. Which is not user productivity, but MS dominance and revenue.
As for development of MS "linux love": I'll be honest, I don't know. For many years (decades in my case), being on *nix felt like a modern-day plane ride: Yes, it's tight, it's draughty, it takes effort, but it's getting you from A to B. By now, you're upgraded, things get better, there's a lot more legroom, and getting from A to B runs like clock work. But then you get to your gate, and you see hordes, immense queues, just because some low cost flyer hit a snag and transferred millions of John and Mabels to your flight. And now your stuck in the middle seat between the smelly Royales, trying to get that presentation done without sticking out your elbows too much...
Or you use Teams. I won't spare you lot my diatribe about this piece of shut.
One thing at a time on a window (no pop-outs, no multiple windows).
Doesn't like VPN (uses a different sign-in protocol and an "am i alive" that involves phoning home to the mothership (I shut you not)).
No group chat without making a team.
Search is awful (though not as awful as Outlook search of shutting archived folders on Onedrive).
You can only speak US english on it and there's no way to turn off spell check so every name (unless it's Brad or LaShut, every acronym, every number with a shutting letter) shows up as misspelled.
The chat editor works differently to the 'full' editor.
This may be a different diatribe to the last list, this is just what the shutting shutter of a shut did to me today.
We have only been using it a few weeks but I don't have all the issues that you seem to (I am running the Windows client).
In chat you can add multiple people to the chat, it isn't intuitive, you have to click a strange people icon at the top right of the chat.
I work in UK English, so type things like colour and haven't yet have it flag up anything that I have correctly typed as being misspelt.
I do agree that one thing at a time in one window needs to be resolved, and that there are lots of other things that can be improved.
So they have decide to release the part of office that nobody wants - that has been forcefully installed even when users have uninstalled it, and no longer has an option to disable the license for - prior to any other Office product. Is this a deliberate move by them to try and show "nobody wants Office on Linux."? I get asked by users on a weekly basis if I can make Teams go away forever.
"Teams is fantastic compared to skype / skype for business".
Your obviously kidding. Teams is awful. Skype is fine fo IM, falls down elsewhere. I now use pidgin for skype client. IM only. Then Zoom for DT sharing and meetings. It's really good on linux, I think it's better than Join.me webex, etc. Teams disappoints on Windows, much less Linux.
Assuming this is a genuine question from someone who hasn't come across this style of work.
A shared window restricts remote access to an application window rather than the whole screen, so your penis-pill notifications don't popup in the corner of your important meeting, and people don't ask you about your desktop background.
Shared content is a read-write area on your machine where you can give control to type or paste content, draw or highlight. I've used it when chairing round-tables of experts- a picture with notations saves a thousand words, and hours doing typed up minutes.
Well that is great and all, can't wait until my organisation switches from the buggy mess that is skype for business, bad enough in itself but for me working on a Linux desktop half the time it's the one "killer app" that's missing. Outlook Web app is great but it's Skype component is horrible.
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